The Greater China Design Competition 2019 (GCDC) was held by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Participants are required to design an energy relay system consists of four cars with different sources of energy, e.g. electrical, elastic energy, solar power, … etc. Each car was required to complete a 4m (L) X 0.5m (W) width path and trigger another car, hence, to finish a total of 12 meters straight path.
The Design, Build & Fly (DBF) is a regular capstone design project under the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Every year, many ME students show a very strong enthusiasm in this project and our department encourages them to participate in different international competitions. Many student competitions are based on solving “real” cases and problems. By participating in a competition, it helps students to build up links between thinking and doing so that they learn to apply theories into practice with a deeper understanding of the concepts.
The topic of the project is “Surgical robotic system development for dental applications”. A group of four students were dedicated to making a compact and dexterous dental robot specially designed for private dental clinics at densely populated cities like Hong Kong. Tendon-driven mechanism is adopted to minimize its size while a six Degree-of-Freedom mechanism in its joints helps boosting its dexterity. A haptic device was utilized to translate the hand motions of the dentist for teleoperation.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques allow intra-operative monitoring of the ablation procedure during cardiovascular electrophysiology (EP). However, currently it is still challenging to carry out effective catheterization under MRI environment. We present an MR-safe robot for intra-cardiac EP intervention. The robot actuation features small hysteresis, effective force transmission and quick response. Experimental evaluation has verified its capability to precisely tele-manipulate a standard clinically used EP catheter. The slave part of the robot is made of non-metallic MR-safe materials, therefore can operate close to or inside the MRI scanner without adversely affecting the MR image quality.
Research on the development of new types of biomaterials has become one of the major focus in the engineering field in recent years. The biomaterial is integrated with medical engineering so it can be engineered to interact with the biological system in the human body for the different medical purpose. In order to opt for the optimal biomaterial for a certain medical purpose, several testing related to the measurement of displacement and strain should be performed on the biomaterial. This project aim to develop an Universal Testing Machine (UTM) with Digital Image Correlation method (DIC) to provide a field true strain measurement and reduces the disturbance on the local mechanical response of the local mechanical response of the testing material, providing a better, more precise and immediate strain/displacement analysis of the experiment than using the extensometer.
The project aims to build a 3D food printer that is user-friendly for household users, through remodelling of the TEVO Tarantula 3D printer. Upon completion on configuration of hardware and software, an extrusion system is designed based on a meat mincer. The goal of this project is to print the customised dish with food material in high precisity. Another focus of this project is exploring food material applicable for 3D printing. With rich nutrient content and high formability, potatoes is chosen to make a great show with other supporting actress. The effort paid by the team does make an exciting return. It is wished that the efficiency of the printer can be greatly enhanced in the foreseeable future and finally be a necessary for a home.